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DTSTAMP:20180218T043504Z
DESCRIPTION:Join us for the inaugural Leon Levy Foundation Lectures in Jewi
sh Material Culture. Andrea M. Berlin will deliver a series of three lectu
res entitled “Beyond the Temple: Jewish Households from the Maccabees to t
he Great Revolt against Rome.” Alex P. Jassen\, Karen B. Stern\, and Azzan
Yadin-Israel will each respond to one lecture and also offer a correspond
ing lunchtime talk the following day. Additional support provided by The D
avid Berg Foundation.\n\n Karen\nB. Stern will give a Brown Bag Lunch pres
entation on Wednesday\, October 18\, at 12:15 pm. Her talk is entitled “Cl
ass\nDivides: Reading\, Writing\, and Jewish Daily Life through Graffiti.”
From Iron Age Judah and onward\, Judahites\, Judeans\, and Jews\ntook chis
els and amateur tools to carve into stone their names and requests to\nbe
remembered. Sometimes\, they did this in places we might suppose\, such as
on\nmemorial plaques or epitaphs. Yet at other times\, they wrote in othe
r locations:\nupon walls of pagan sanctuaries\, around doorways of monumen
tal synagogues\, and\nencircling the tombs of revered priests and rabbis.
Found in these places\,\nthese types of writings\, best classified as graf
fiti\, might seem disrespectful\,\nblasphemous\, and even sacrilegious. Ye
t Jewish writers likely viewed these acts\nof writing in quite different w
ays—as modes of social engagement with other\nJews and with their gentile
neighbors\, of prayer\, commemoration\, and\ninteraction with the dead. Wh
en considered from distinct vantages\, still\, their\nwritings can tell us
something even more significant and surprising about\nJewish inscribers\,
particularly concerning their abilities to read and write.\nTraditional s
cholarship on ancient literacy theorized that scarce numbers of\nancient p
eoples (whether Jews or their neighbors) could read or write at all\,\nbec
ause so few people possessed the requisite funds and education to develop
\nassociated skills. But more careful attention to the contents and locati
ons of\nthe aforementioned graffiti\, written by Jews throughout the ancie
nt world\,\nsupports a contradictory theory: that many more Jews could rea
d and write in\nearlier and later antiquity than are commonly thought. In
this lecture\, Stern\nwill discuss ancient graffiti written by Jews\, thei
r geographic and spatial\ndistributions\, contents\, and modes of display\
, and their implications for our\nunderstandings of education\, class\, an
d status among Jews in the Greco-Roman\nworld.Karen B. Stern is Assistant
Professor of History at Brooklyn\nCollege of the City University of New Yo
rk. She is the author of Inscribing Devotion and Death:\nArchaeological Ev
idence for Jewish Populations in North Africa (Brill\,\n2008) and of the f
orthcoming Writing\non the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiqu
ity (Princeton\nUniversity Press). Her research considers the material cul
ture of Jewish\npopulations throughout the Mediterranean world.\n\nThis ev
ent will be livestreamed. Please check back the day of the event for a lin
k to the video. To watch videos of past events please visit our YouTube pa
ge.
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20171018T121500
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20171018T131500
SUMMARY:Bard Graduate Center: Class Divides
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